


Waiting for Warmth

by duskodair



Series: On discovery [4]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Denmark-Norway, M/M, None of my Nordics are cishet - Freeform, Plague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 19:12:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13665504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duskodair/pseuds/duskodair
Summary: Denmark’s been trying to keep Norway warm for hundreds of years. Why should their people need to know about it?





	Waiting for Warmth

The biggest problem with Norway, Denmark decided, was that he wore too many layers. He wasn’t annoyed about it from a sexual point of view, he’d much rather that Nor was warm and happy than be instantly gratified. Besides, he quite enjoyed unwrapping Norway like a present.

The issue with the layers was, primarily, that it prevented them from going anywhere quickly. In the morning, Norway spent much longer dressing than Denmark, wrapping his smaller body in layer after layer of fabric.

It somewhat irked Denmark that Norway felt the need to wrap himself up so much, one of the clear motivations for the many layers was to hide the mass of scars that littered Norway’s pale form. Not all the scars were Denmark’s fault, but it upset him to remember that some of them were.

It also irritated Denmark to note how Norway’s layers changed the shape of his body, rounding his sharp and delicate edges, to make him look uncharacteristically soft and squishy, almost like Finland. And Denmark didn’t like thinking of Finland when he could be thinking about Norway. He had nothing against Finland but Norway was always preferable.

When they were out and about, he missed Norway’s reassuring warmth, reminding him that he wasn’t alone. Norway would hold his hand with a gloved one, and his mouth was hidden by a scarf that Iceland had made.

When Norway was bundled up, Denmark couldn’t read his body language so easily, making it harder to spot when Nor was panicking and needed Denmark’s help.

They were out by the sea, drifting through sand dunes as the sea breeze buffeted them. Norway looked like a small penguin, wrapped up and huddled in on himself, dressed in a red coat and blue scarf, subtly mimicking his flag. Denmark was struggling to remember the last time he’d seen Norway truly warm and content, rather than either freezing or boiling, as he often overheated in warmer climates. He decided that it had been in the thirteen hundreds, before the plague, before they almost lost Norway with Norway’s nobility and sovereignty.

Denmark had tried to keep him warm, wrapping his plague ridden body in all the blankets and coverings he could find. He’d kept a vigil over Norway, fearing that each moment could be his last, as in the surrounding streets, corpses were carted away to be placed in what Swedish academics now described as a ‘mass grave lasagna’. They buried hundreds of bodies under the sand. Denmark remembered. He remembered the tolling of the bells and the chanting of the despairing priests, praying desperately for salvation.

He’d wrapped Norway up. The layers attempted to keep him warm as his body gave up on him. They also hid the mess of welt and sores that made up his skin. Layers of cloth concealed the sharp angles of the small nation’s malnourished form, not that Denmark was much healthier. The two had huddled together as plague ravaged their lands and Norway hadn’t been warm since.

Norway had suffered far worse from the plague than Denmark and still he was recovering, he easily grew tired and often fell asleep on Denmark in meetings. Denmark made notes for both of them. During the plague he’d cared for Norway, and he’d never stopped. Truly, he’d cared for Norway since he’d found the smaller nation, although Norway had always been capable of bashing in the head of anyone who offended him with a hammer.

Since the Viking age had ended, Norway had been losing his strength, and Denmark had been terrified for his safety after Sweden had claimed him. Sweden and Denmark had history, and Denmark was perfectly aware of the worst that his northern neighbour could do. Once he’d been impaled, live on a wooden spike hammered into the ground and left for Norway to find.

Denmark had tried to give Norway a constitution and independence, but Sweden had taken him, picked him up and walked away, leaving Denmark to care for Iceland, Greenland and Faroes, who had all been young at the time. Iceland was the eldest and had tried to help with the younger ones, even as he waited, day after day, for Norway to return.

Denmark wrapped the children in layers, trying to keep them warm, even if he couldn’t warm Norway any more. He hung his wedding ring on a chain by his heart so that it would stay warm. He learned to knit so that he could make layers and blankets to send to Sweden to keep Norway warm. Whether Norway ever received his parcels he wasn’t too sure, he’d never received a reply or acknowledgment, but he’d never asked.

In 1905, Norway became independent and Denmark began to send his parcels to Oslo, to help to furnish Norway’s new home. At the coronation of Norway’s new king, Norway had dressed in delicate finery and shivered the whole way through. Denmark had wanted to hold him, but held back out of fear of undermining Norway’s newly regained nationhood.

Denmark was much happier when Norway was somewhat warm, ensconced in layer after layer. He just wished that Norway could be warm again. He simply vowed to keep holding on to Nor until that happened as they gazed far out to sea, birds swirling overhead and as the biting wind blew.

When Norway’s people asked about the layers, the pair never truly answered, leaving his citizens to make assumptions. In due course rumours blew in the wind, their people trying to piece together lives and lifestyles as the two continued on their way, only providing snippets of their lives over Instagram and their other links to society.

They were themselves and that was all the world needed to know. They could stand together on a beach until time ran out, cloaked in layers of mystery and warmed by each other’s company. 

**Author's Note:**

> Denmark is adorable. Norway is cold. And Sweden needs to leave them alone.  
> I know it’s a bit incoherent but I don’t care.


End file.
